Why We Fight

Director Eugene Jarecki ("The Trials Of Henry Kissinger") uses Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech as a talking point for such people as Richard Perle, Gore Vidal, John McCain and Wilton Sekzer, a Vietnam vet and retired New York City Cop, to discuss America’s military crisis. In his 1961 speech Eisenhower warned Americans to guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the "military-industrial complex." Unfortunately, he removed the word "congress" from the phrase and left the public to wonder how such a warning should be followed. Eisenhower’s concerns for the country’s destruction from within by attempting to protect against threat from the outside world are shown to have come to full fruition in the guise of corporate warmongers such as Haliburton and Lockheed Martin. Jarecki explains how neocon think tanks have robbed the American people of their imagined democracy in a country that spends more on its military than all other military nations combined.

Rated PG-13. 98 mins. (A) (Five Stars)